Social Networking Sites

Social networking is a global revolution, enabling billions of people worldwide to stay in touch with their friends, share experiences and photographs and exchange personal content. In many ways it has replaced the telephone and email. For many users, it has become a way of life.

Various social networking sites are also valuable tools used by many companies and individuals to extend their contacts and deliver marketing messages.

The nature of social networking – having such a massive base of users who are unknown to you – means that using it carries a degree of risk including becoming a target for cyber-criminals.

The Risks

Disclosure of private information by either yourself or friends/contacts.

Bullying.

Cyberstalking.

Access to age-inappropriate content.

Online grooming and child abuse.

Encountering comments that are violent, sexual, extremist or racist in nature, or offensive activities and hateful attitudes.

People trying to persuade or harrass you into changing your basic beliefs or ideologies, or adopt an extremist stance.

Prosecution or recrimination from posting offensive or inappropriate comments.

Phishing emails allegedly from social networking sites, but actually encouraging you to visit fraudulent or inappropriate websites.

Friends’, other people’s and companies' posts encouraging you to link to fraudulent or inappropriate websites.

People hacking into or hijacking your account or page.

Viruses or spyware contained within message attachments or photographs.

You or a family member posting that you're away or going away on holiday and therefore advertising that your home is empty, leaving the way open for burglars. If you do so and you make an insurance claim for a burglary while you are away, your insurance company may well reject it for this reason.

Social networks using your personal data for purposes other than management of your account, such as selling it on to other organisations.

You can avoid these risks and enjoy using social networking sites by following a few sensible guidelines:

Do not let peer pressure or what other people are doing on these sites convince you to do something you are not comfortable with.

Be wary of publishing any identifying information about yourself – either in your profile or in your posts – such as phone numbers, pictures of your home, workplace or school, your address or birthday.

Pick a user name that does not include any personal information. For example, “joe_caribbean” or “jane_leeward” would be bad choices.

Set up a separate email account to register and receive mail from the site. That way if you want to close down your account/page, you can simply stop using that mail account. Setting up a new email account is very simple and quick to do using such providers as Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or gmail.